


The Countdown To Your Heart

by SpencerMalloy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: AU, M/M, Nico hides bad romance novels under his bed, PJO, Pining, We all know it, gay as fuck, its not even a heacanon at this point, solangelo, soulmate!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpencerMalloy/pseuds/SpencerMalloy
Summary: Nico has been ticking off the days until he meets his soulmate all year--literally. Between his evil english teacher keeping him from trying to find his soulmate, his stepmother Marie trying to give him speeches about how everything is beyond their control, and a heatwave, Nico is about ready to step right off the roof without a safety net.





	The Countdown To Your Heart

Tick

Nico’s head shot up as he saw the number on his wrist go down again. It had been steadily decreasing ever since he started ap literature at the beginning of the semester. His teacher refused to let him look in the hallway to see who his soulmate was, to talk to him (he hoped it was a him) or to just sit closer to the door so maybe he could catch a glimpse of him through the skinny window above the doorknob. It was the last few weeks of school, but his class was still doing work. He had a higher number on his arm than there were days left in the school year—twenty-seven. Nico was not waiting that long. 

***  
He turned the pages of his book carefully, trying to avoid the papercuts he was prone to. His room was in the attic and the poor insulation meant he often couldn’t feel his already cold hands, but it was summer—so it was sweltering and there was no escape if he wanted to remain tucked away from his family. He liked them well enough, as much as anyone could like their family. His sisters were annoying and his father tried his best, but Nico imagined that they would have the type of relationship that neither of them really liked until Nico was an adult with respected opinions. And his father wasn’t always in his house to eat all the frosted flakes. Such goes the hands of time.

His wrist was itching. All the medical professionals say that it’s impossible to feel when your number goes down, but Nico didn’t make a habit of trusting medical professionals. He willed his eyes away from the book, his third read-through, to look at the center of his wrist. Twenty-seven. It had been twenty-seven for a week now and it was really starting to piss him off, did this kid just stop coming to school? Mr. Santino hadn’t been to class in a week; was it even possible that his soulmate could be a teacher? He supposed it could happen. He had never seen any evidence or lack of evidence of a number on Santino’s wrist in the hallways, and he had never talked to him directly. He groaned. No offense to the balding teachers of the world but Nico was just not ready to love someone like that yet. 

He managed to coax himself out of the bed, his hair sticking to his forehead from sweat. He left the book on the bedside table and managed to stumble over to the window. Nico wasn’t the most graceful when the room temperature wasn’t a hundred and seven degrees, so there were no expectations of him to be when it was. He opened the blinds and winced at the sunlight coming through.

There were kids his age riding bikes up and down the street, but since Nico was on the fourth floor he couldn’t see them very well. That was probably a good thing, considering that most people don’t like to be watched by creepy goth-looking kids who stare forlornly out windows. His gaze shifted from the kids to the skyline. Kids. Skyline. Kids. Skyline. Skyline. Skyline. The sun was setting, the temperature would hopefully be going down soon. He couldn’t take another night of sweating through his sheets. One of the kids drew his attention away from the pink clouds, a kid in an orange shirt (he was wearing a helmet, so he couldn’t see much of anything else about the kid. He also assumed they were a he, there was every possible chance that they weren’t.) 

There was a ledge just outside of his window. He wasn’t supposed to sit on it, but that didn’t really stop him. The roof was sunbaked and hot against his thighs when he sat down, but not enough so to actually burn him. Down on the street, Orange Shirt was saying something to the younger kids around him. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could hear that he was definitely saying something. Nico closed his eyes and when he opened them again the entire group was leaving, probably going home. 

The sky was pink and orange and yellow. Nico thought about how the sky could be any color it wanted and wondered if it just liked pink the best. He wondered if his soulmate was under it right now, or maybe he was inside, like Nico usually was at this time of day. What did he look like? Sound like? Who was he? There was a strong possibility he wouldn’t even want Nico. It was a growing trend among people their age to reject their soulmates, form their own paths and find love that way. It made sense, Nico was sure it was freeing- but he could never do it himself. 

His father had married for what he thought was love, Nico’s mother Maria, and had many happy years together. He and his sister Bianca had a very happy childhood- and then everything went to shit. Around the time he was ten all of his father’s dirty laundry came out. Not that he considered Hazel dirty laundry, she was probably one of his best friends. One of his only friends. But that his father could have an affair? Unthinkable. But he had hid it well for six years and when Maria died, Marie and Hazel were almost immediately moved into the house. Nico liked Marie well enough, she was kind but strict, and she loved Hazel and his father with all her heart. But there would always be disdain within Nico, knowing that this woman had stolen his father’s affections from his mother. No. He was lying to himself again. After all, the blame wasn’t all on Marie. It wasn’t even mostly on Marie. It was his father’s fault for cheating, he dug that grave himself. So he got along well with Marie, and he didn’t talk to Hazel about his mother often. He knew it was a lot of stress on her already, stress she hadn’t signed up for. And maybe Nico could have forgiven his father if Marie was his soulmate. But she wasn’t. Marie had met and missed her soulmate and would likely never find them, and Hades had twenty more ticks to go. He’d had twenty more ticks for seven years. What would happen with him and Marie once he found his soulmate wasn’t something that Nico brought up.

Nico couldn’t cause pain like that to anyone. He couldn’t just date and get attached to someone who he would probably leave one day anyway, once someone better came along. Someone made for him, someone who would most likely love him too. It wasn’t a mistake of his father’s he was willing to repeat. All the thinking about soulmates made his fingers twitch over his wrist, the faint indent that the numbers made underneath his skin. 27— no. Not a 27. He’d felt it enough times in the past week to know that the shape was different, his eyes darted down to his skin—15.

The kids on the bikes were gone, they rode away when the streetlights came on. Even if they were still on the street there was no way Nico could make it down from the roof in time to talk to them, to meet them, to see if any of them had the same number as him. He shut his eyes tight and leaned back against the tiling of the house until it left imprints in his back. He didn’t manage to crawl back inside his room until the moon was out, and by then everyone in the house was asleep. Sometimes being the only one awake was the worst feeling he could have, and tonight was one of those times.

***

Days passed and days passed and Nico was thankful he’d worked hard in the beginning of the semester, because he was not paying attention the last few weeks. He just couldn’t. Every day he waited until ap English and once he was there he just stared longingly at the door, hoping the teacher would have enough pity on him to let him into the hallway and wait for his soulmate to walk by so his counter could tick down. No one had ever beaten a counter before, but there was a first time for everything.  
At home he got increasingly antsier. Nothing could cheer him up or relax him, not even sitting on the ledge just outside his window (which he did almost every night now. The kids on the bikes hadn’t returned.) Even Marie had taken to trying extra hard to cheer him up. Their conversations went pretty much like this:

‘Your counter is going down every day, this is a good thing.’  
‘I could have met him already.’  
‘No, you couldn’t have.’  
‘No offense, but he’s literally twenty feet from me every day. If you think I wouldn’t see him if I just walked out the door then you’re seriously bent, Marie.’  
She would make a face at that. ‘That’s not how the counters work and you know it, you’ll meet him soon enough. Just be patient.’

Which was just the worst thing to say to someone who was anticipating anything, not to mention a teenager waiting for true love as it lingered just out of reach. In hindsight, Marie was just the worst at giving advice and motivational talks. He didn’t want to be his father, he didn’t want to be Marie, he didn’t want to be a character in one of the novels under his bed. He had so much love to give and there was only so much of it he could share with Hazel. He knew a soulmate wouldn’t replace the kind of love that filled his heart when his mother was alive, or even the kind that he had before Bianca left for college. He didn’t expect a miracle. He just wanted an opportunity for something good to start.

***  
1\. one tick left, no days of school to go. He hoped that he would meet his soulmate before summer ended and not be doomed to spend years with a single tick left. It happened to people all the time. There was no guarantee that you wouldn’t meet your soulmate just five minutes before you died, which was surprisingly the plot of many bad romance novels (several of which Nico had stashed under his bed.)

He and Hazel had decided to take a walk down the street to a corner store that sold ice cream, to celebrate the first cool night in several days and hopefully the end of a heatwave. She got vanilla (because of course she did) and he got a gelato.

“That’s not ice cream,” Hazel pointed out.

Nico looked offended. “It is so,” He said, cradling it close to his chest. “Just because you have the pallet of an American doesn’t mean we all need to sink so low.”

“You literally just bought American ice cream in a plastic cup that says ‘gelato’ instead of a cone,” Hazel said. “there is nothing different about what we are eating.”

“I’ll have you know, mine is raspberry.”

Hazel rolled her eyes and went to sit at one of the booths—just as a group of guys was walking away from one.

“Shit!” The blonde said, using the corner of his green flannel to wipe the ice cream off of his shirt. “Jesus fuck that’s cold.”

Hazel scrambled for napkins, the stoic demeanor she and Nico shared with each other melting into southern politeness in front of the strangers. The blonde took the napkins even though he had already gotten most of the ice cream off with his shirt. 

“It’s not a big deal, just an old camp shirt,” he said, his eyes trailing up, meant for Hazel but landing on Nico instead. His eyes were the sky when you looked straight up on a clear day and they had him frozen in place. The blonde blinked a few times before looking back at Hazel.

“Sorry about your ice cream,” he said, “I’ll buy you another if you—“

Hazel held her hands out in front of her, “No, no, absolutely not necessary, do you want an ice cream?” she asked. “It’s the least I can do.”

All the guys behind him stood there awkwardly, not knowing how to deal with the scene of two people both overcompensating in apologies for something that neither of them did on purpose, usually Nico would be with them. But he had just seen the most beautiful boy ever. And his wrist was itching.

“No, don’t you even think about it,” he stole one more glance behind her head, right at Nico, and looked away just as fast. “Have a nice day,” he said, squeezing past them to get to the door.

Nico refused to look at his wrist. There was no way in Hell he could get that lucky. He stuffed his hand into the pocket of his jeans and turned back to Hazel.

“Seriously, though,” he said, “Do you want a new ice cream?”

She turned around and met his eyes. She looked dead tired. “Ugh. Yes. That was exhausting,” she drawled, her accent coming out. “Why can’t I just hold onto anything for once?” 

Nico rolled his eyes. “Oh that was so not your fault, don’t even let yourself feel bad about it.”

He walked back to the counter, where the girl behind it had heard and already started scooping another vanilla. She handed it to him with a sympathetic smile, “It’s on the house.”

Nico was about to thank her when he heard the bell behind him chime and someone rush into the shop.

“Hey, can I see your arm?” The guy asked frantically. Hazel jumped a bit, but held up her arm anyway. The guy walked around her, bent over her arm so he could make sure he was seeing it right. Nico’s fist clenched tighter in his pocket. He knew very well that Hazel had another 83 ticks until she met her soulmate, and it hadn’t gone down since their trip to Niagara Falls a few months ago. 

A defeated noise escaped the blonde’s lips as he released Hazel’s arm. 

“I…Uh, sorry to bother you,” he muttered, slipping silently from the shop, so softly the bell didn’t even notice the door had moved.

Hazel shook her head. “I wonder who he missed,” She said, taking the cone Nico handed her. 

“Hey, wait—where are you going?” she called as he got to the door.

“I’ll be back,” Nico managed to say, his heart beating in his skull, vibrating his brain, his body numb with adrenaline. He couldn’t breathe.

He was dragging his converse on the pavement as he walked, shoulders hunched. 

Nico tried to say something, to vibrate his vocal chords and speak, but it just wasn’t happening. His throat was too dry, his tongue was too big—he hadn’t even looked at his own arm yet.

It didn’t take long to catch up, with how slow the guy was walking. When he tapped him on the shoulder and cleared his throat to get his attention, the blonde jumped before he turned around.

“Oh…Hello,” he said, a raincloud in his irises. 

“I,” Nico managed. He shut his eyes and pulled his hand out of his pocket, holding it wrist out in front of him for the stranger to see. “I’m too scared to look.”

He gulped when he felt calloused fingertips on his skin, barely there, a tentative touch holding up his arm. The stranger said nothing. Slowly he opened his eyes, only to be met with a mouth full of yellow braces grinning at him and sun spots the shape of pupils forming at the edge of his vision.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked.

His breath caught in his throat. “Nico.”

His tan was dark but his freckles were darker, scattered all over his face and down his neck and into his hairline, under his eyebrows. “Hello, Nico,” he said. “My name is Will.” Every word he said was fragile, like at any moment Nico would rip his arm away and bolt. Nico wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t.

Will’s hand gripped his wrist lightly, turning it back towards Nico so he could see the number. He didn’t want to look away from Will’s eyes.

“I do believe I’ve been looking for you for a very long time,” Will whispered, and Nico finally managed to pull his eyes away from the 62 miles of perfection that were Will’s eyes.

0.


End file.
